Few Americans may realize that, under current law, releasing their digital health records to an app—So easy! Just like using Uber!—is like being bitten by a vampire: There is nothing you can do to reverse this action, and it has the potential to infect every part of your life. Third-party health apps—think apps for fertility, weight loss, lifestyle changes, or diabetes management—aren’t covered by federal privacy laws. They certainly aren’t covered by HIPAA, which governs only health industry “covered entities,” like health insurance companies, doctors, and hospitals, and requires that those actors adequately protect your health information and use (and disclose) that data only as minimally necessary to provide you services.
So, unless something changes, once you click impatiently through your favorite health app’s terms of service, that app will be able to sell your data—including your name and everything in your medical records—to anyone. A recent study found that 19 out of a sample of 24 general-purpose mobile health apps shared user data with more than 50 unique companies, most of which were data analytics companies; another study showed that many depression-tracking and smoking cessation apps currently share users’ personal details with third parties without clear disclosure.
As of iOS 13.1, certain Qi chargers that are rated to deliver 7.5W to wireless-chargeable iPhones have been capped to just 5W. This is affecting the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max plus last year's iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models.
Adobe is out today with its 2020 release of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. The entry-level photo and video software from Adobe is available now with new features like one-click subject selection, guided edits, automatically colorize black and white photos, reduce noise in videos, and much more.
Grep searching apparently has gotten BBEdit creator Rich Siegel’s attention, because there’s a whole lot more of it in BBEdit 13. The Find window has gained the ability, previously available in the Live Search sheet, to automatically highlight all matching items in the active document window. Live Search has added the ability to use grep patterns. There’s a new grep cheat sheet right in the Find window, which should be helpful for people who are just getting into regular expressions—and even experienced grep users forget the right syntax for a particular pattern.
A pair of new iPhone applications can do a handy trick: record video from the front- and rear-facing cameras at the same time.
DuetCam does this for fun, while Parachute is a personal-safety tool.
The app serves as a one-stop shop for organizing all of your trip-related information: you can add Apple Maps points of interest to your agenda, scheduling them to specific times and days, add notes to each saved location, store important travel documents in the app, and share your full trip data with fellow travelers. All of this functionality is enhanced by a strong app experience thanks to system features like multiwindow on iPad, Sign In with Apple, dark mode, and more.
Apple encourages developers to take advantage of macOS Catalina technologies like Sign in with Apple, Sidecar, Core ML 3, and Metal. Apple also highlights Mac Catalyst, designed to bring iPad apps to the Mac.
Just a few days after releasing the 10th beta of macOS Catalina, Apple has released the macOS Catalina Golden Master. That’s just ahead of the expected public release tomorrow, October 4th.
Serial numbers are not top secret information—don’t turn them into a frustrating game of hide-and-seek.